


I'll Miss You Most of All Scarecrow

by giselleslash



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Goodbyes, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giselleslash/pseuds/giselleslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bradley decides a camp out at the top of Pierrefonds is a good way to say goodbye, Colin decides it’s time he says something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Miss You Most of All Scarecrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the RPF Challenge at the [merlinrpf](http://merlinrpf.livejournal.com/) comm on livejournal. Thanks to [nu_breed](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nu_breed/pseuds/nu_breed) for the beta/Brit-pick. ♥

Colin clutches at the pile of duvets and pillows he has in his arms and wonders who had the bright idea to camp out at the top of Pierrefonds, _‘For fun, mate, for fun’._

Oh yeah, Bradley. It was Bradley. 

And Colin is nothing if not consistent in that he goes along with Bradley’s every stupid whim, idiotic idea, and apparent brain spasm--which is obviously what they are, some sort of seizure in Bradley’s brain that makes him think stealing all of Rupert’s cardigans and holding them hostage for, ‘a pair of Hop’s underwear, a lock of Eoin’s hair (a big one, not some sissy two or three strands, like a nice big handful), Angel’s purple flowered bra, a leprechaun for Colin, oh, and some Jammie Dodgers ‘cause I watched Doctor Who last night,’ is a really fucking awesome idea. 

So Colin stands and clings to his duvets and pillows like they’re his favorite plush toy as he watches Bradley take the heavy cool box of food, and hopefully loads of alcohol, Katie has been struggling with away from her to carry himself because he’s so stupidly gentlemanly sometimes. Of course he ruins it all by laughing at something Katie mutters to him and calls her, _‘an old cow.’_

Still. The sentiment is there and he makes the insult sound like an endearment anyway.

Somehow Colin manages to be the last one up the cramped stairs of the tower, right behind Bradley and his perfect fucking arse in his ridiculously thin pyjama bottoms, and oh my fucking God, was he wearing _anything_ underneath them? Colin has lasted five years without breaking, but there’s only so much a man can do when Bradley’s arse is essentially in his face. 

Colin thinks of just leaning in and taking a bite.

“How’s it going there, Cols?” Bradley shouts over his shoulder as if Colin isn’t a foot behind with his face in Bradley’s backside. “Do I need to carry your things for you too?”

“How about the girls carry everything and you carry _me_ ,” Colin whines. “You never said there was five thousand steps.”

Bradley laughs and Colin smacks the back of his thigh and tells him to shut up and keep moving. 

When they’re at the top everything gets dumped in a massive pile and all four of them fall down on top of it. 

“Let’s just sleep like this,” Angel says from where she’s wedged between Bradley and Colin. “I’ll just pull one of you on top of me if I get cold.”

Bradley laughs and rolls over on top of Angel, spreads himself like a starfish over her. She bears it for all of ten seconds before her muffled shouts are coming from the vicinity of Bradley’s armpit and her right arm starts waving from underneath him. Katie takes pity on her and grabs hold of her hand to try to pull her free. It’s a struggle but Angel is finally freed and nearly on top of Katie while Bradley ends up flopped back halfway on top of Colin.

Colin grunts, but laughs just the same and shoves at Bradley until he rolls off of him. Bradley doesn’t roll far, though, he stays tucked close to Colin’s side and Colin lets himself curl his fingers into the bottom of Bradley’s T-shirt. 

Bradley doesn’t say anything, just lies on his back; one arm over his chest and the other flung out at his side. They’re all so close that Bradley’s hand ends up on top of Katie’s thigh and Colin stares at it; the fingers loosely curled up toward the palm, the back of it resting against the bare skin of Katie’s leg. She’s wearing some ridiculous kitten sweatshirt and a pair of boxers as pyjamas and it’s all legs and white skin and Bradley’s hand curled up, empty. All Colin wants to do is reach across him and slide his hand up along the inside of Bradley’s arm until his fingers slot themselves into place between Bradley’s and they’re palm to palm. 

But it’s a stupid thought and Colin’s pretty sure the boxers Katie’s wearing are actually Bradley’s boxers because Colin remembers in painful detail the summer they were fucking each other four years ago and the fact that Bradley had told him when he and Katie had stopped fucking Katie stole all of his damn underwear. Bradley had called her the knicker goblin for the rest of filming that year and never did give Colin back the underwear he’d stolen from him in return because he was too damn lazy to go buy some of his own. 

Colin smiles to himself when he remembers how Bradley had shouted at him, _’How do I order underwear en francais, Colin? How!?’_

They had been in Cardiff at the time.

Colin can hardly begrudge Katie the boxers though because every year after that, for Christmas and his birthday, Katie gave Bradley the frilliest, laciest underwear she could find. Colin had teased Katie one year about donating the underwear to the poor and panty-less but Katie had looked at Colin and said, absolutely seriously, _’Why would I do that? He wears them. They’re making some lucky girl or boy very happy.’_

And that conversation cemented Colin’s favorite wanking fantasy from there on out.

“Food. Foooood,” Angel moans as she makes an attempt at reaching for the cool box. It’s too far away so Katie heaves herself up to get it and Colin watches as Bradley’s hand moves with Katie--turning palm down and sliding up to her knee, which he gives a quick squeeze, before letting go. 

Colin wonders if there was ever more to them than that single summer so many years ago. They’d never made a secret of it and they acted the same way after it was over as they had before it began. They were confusing as hell. 

Sometimes, though, Colin thinks, it’s better not knowing the details.

Katie has pretty much bought every junk food known to man, or at least the French, and half their wine supply as well. Bradley teases her about the wine but he takes a bottle anyway and drinks straight from it even though she brought paper cups. Colin wants to lick his throat, wants to suck on his Adam’s apple and bruise his skin. Instead he fills his own paper cup and chugs it down. 

“I’m going to drink this entire bottle and start speaking in French.” Bradley decides and Colin laughs because Bradley’s idea of ‘speaking in French’ is just him speaking with an exaggerated French accent and adding, _’Oh la la!’_ at the end of everything. 

“Yes, that’ll work,” Angel agrees as she shakes her head and Bradley smiles at her, pleased. 

“French grapes infused with--French things,” Colin says. “Makes total sense.”

Bradley leans back against Colin’s shoulder and cradles his bottle of wine like a baby and mutters, “Oui. And oh la la, and all that rubbish.”

Colin crooks his arm up and scratches Bradley’s head, his fingers muss up Bradley’s already messy hair and Colin thinks, just for a second, that maybe the entire world has disappeared around them and they’re just on this piece of dust, this floating castle, the four of them. He says it out loud and there’s no embarrassment, no explanation needed, because the other three agree and Colin decides he’ll miss miss them more than he’s ever missed anyone else before.

It’s hard to find people who don’t need explanations, who will just float on a castle with you no questions asked.

“We’re in _The Neverending Story_ ,” Katie says.

“Call our name, Bastian, please! Save us!” Bradley shouts.

“Leonard,” Angel says and Colin laughs until he cries even though it’s quite possibly not nearly as funny as he thinks it is.

They talk about so many things. Memories and stories that pile up one on top of the other and Colin’s so fucking happy that they’re there together, just the four of them, their second to last night in France. Before he can even blink it’s the middle of the night and they’re surrounded by empty wine bottles and food wrappers and they have to get up in just a little over three hours. 

Colin wishes he could reverse time, back to the moment they started hiking up the stairs of the tower, and then just loop it. An infinite loop of a French night clinging to the last hours of summer.

The girls drag half the pile of duvets and pillows around the curve of the tower because Angel says Bradley snores, which isn’t a lie, but to Colin Bradley’s snores are like a white noise machine. He doesn’t mind them, he sleeps better with the sound of them in his ear anyway.

Bradley gets their pile of duvets stacked up and Colin burrows under the top one because he’s cold and the night aches in his bones. He watches Bradley do the same as the girls call out goodnight from the darkness.

“I’m going to miss this,” Bradley says and Colin thinks about how much that one word encompasses: ‘this’. 

All of this. Everything. Years of a place and people that feel like home. Colin knows they’ve all agreed that it’s time--it needs to be over--and that there will be so many amazing things beyond this crazy little thing of theirs, but it’s hard to imagine right now. Not when he’s cocooned in warmth that smells like Bradley and he can reach out and touch him if he wants and there’s not miles between them; only the metaphorical miles Colin has put between them to keep some small piece of himself whole because he’s not like Katie. They’re not like Bradley and Katie, they’re Bradley and Colin, and if Colin had taken that step toward Bradley and it had all ended Colin knows he could never be the same as he was before. 

Their course isn’t smooth. It isn’t easy. And Colin loves Bradley all the more for that. 

Colin just hopes the world sees the Bradley he does. The one that’s quiet and kind, the one that’s so very careful and considerate of others that Colin worries he’ll forget about himself. Colin wants everyone to know those things because they’re the best parts of Bradley, and if there are things that are even more dear that Colin wants to keep for himself then that’s no one’s business but his own.

“I’ll miss you most of all,” Colin says in return.

He can see Bradley’s mouth turn up in a smile. “Scarecrow.”

Colin laughs quietly and moves closer to Bradley. “Yes, you’re my Scarecrow.”

“You know that makes you Dorothy.”

Colin shrugs and settles his head on Bradley’s shoulder. “I have a thing for ruby slippers.”

Bradley laces their fingers together and Colin thinks he had the right idea, before, that palm to palm they fit. Just right. 

“Kinky, Colin. I never knew.”

“And you have a thing for women’s underwear. We all have our secrets.”

“McGrath and I are going to have words if she keeps telling people that.”

“To be fair,” Colin says, “I think it was only me she told.”

“And Angel. And most definitely Eoin too.”

Colin smiles and turns into Bradley so his lips brush against the softness of his T-shirt. “Okay then. Words will be had.”

“Really really angry ones too.”

Colin just breathes in the scent of Bradley and wonders if he can say it. If he can finally let go. It’s the only thing he’s ever _not_ said to Bradley. 

“Did you love her?” he says instead.

“Of course I did. She’s Katie.” 

“Not like that--” Colin says, stops, not knowing how to finish that sentence. 

Colin feels Bradley turn his head towards him so that his mouth is brushing against his hair. “You’re such a romantic, Colin,” Bradley says and it sounds so fond, so amused and charmed that Colin squeezes Bradley’s hand. 

“You are too,” he argues. And Bradley is. Colin knows because Bradley’s been romancing him for years, probably without knowing. 

Probably definitely without knowing. 

Colin’s sense of romance is warped and just left of normal and he thinks Bradley would be amused to know all the ways he’s romanced Colin completely unawares. 

“Maybe,” Bradley says and it takes awhile for him to add, “And yes, I did love her, then, but not-- I don’t know, not in any way but our own way. You know you just love someone and there’s no reason for it, or maybe every reason. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, it does. I get it.”

“You always do.”

Colin shrugs, but his heart is pounding and he knows he’s finally going to say it, and that somehow it’s exactly the right time even though it was a long time coming.

“I love you that way. For no reason, and every reason, but it always makes sense to me.”

Colin thinks Bradley could react in all kinds of ways, could say all kinds of things. There are a million and one ways, he’s sure, if he took the time to count. But somehow Bradley chooses the right way and it doesn’t surprise Colin at all.

“I know,” Bradley says. 

And Colin knows he does.

It’s all stupidly simple and Colin thinks, of course it is.

“Took you long enough,” Bradley says. “Thought I’d be waiting till I was old. With a beard down to here.”

Bradley slices his free hand across the middle of his stomach and Colin slaps it. 

“We had all of this,” Colin says as he sort of waves his hand around in the air in way of an explanation. “I didn’t want things to get weird.”

“Col, we’ve always been weird.”

Bradley says it so seriously that Colin laughs. And kisses Bradley because now he can.

“Yeah,” Colin says against Bradley’s mouth, “we’ve always been.”

 

~End

**Author's Note:**

> If you prefer to comment on LJ you can do so **[here](http://giselleslash.livejournal.com/409758.html)**. Thanks for reading. :)


End file.
